RNG in Competitive Games - Can Prevent Skilled Players from Enjoying Masterful Play
Many competitive games feature some random element. Some games have it as a central feature - Poker contains a great deal of randomness, in the shuffling and dealing of cards, but is still played a competitive level. But if this randomness is poorly implemented, it can stop a player from developing and appreciating masterful play - the random element may feel disruptive, unfair, or unnecessary. If a random game element disrupts the flow of skilled play, it will worsen the experience of the high-level player and discourage them from pursuing mastery. Examples: Super Smash Brothers Brawl: SSBB made many changes to the gameplay of its previous iteration, Super Smash Brothers Melee. From a high-level competitive perspective, these generally worsened the experience and made masterful play harder to enjoy. Some changes were not random - slower movement, fewer movement tools, and unbalanced characters made high-level play worse. But a random element was also introduced - tripping. Certain attacks carried with them a chance to trip an opponent, often at a very low chance (%20 - %40). In addition, any fast movement at all contained a very small chance of making the player randomly trip. Tripping caused the player's character to fall into a helpless state for a few seconds, making them unable to attack and vulnerable to the enemy until recovering from the trip. Thus, a high-level player making quick moves across a stage was subject to the constant chance of suddenly becoming completely helpless to their opponent. Even though the chance for a random movement trip was very slim (1%), the inability for either player in a match to plan for it, defend against it, or take advantage of it meant that whenever it did happen, it broke the flow of the game. Tripping itself was not the issue, as moves that guaranteed that state to happen could be predicted and avoided. The very slim, uncontrollable chance was the problem - and as a consequence, high-level players quickly developed mods that removed it from the game entirely. Halo: Reach: Halo is well know for its fierce competition and competitive nature. This was partly due to the balance of the Pistol and Battle Rifle in the first 3 installments. In Halo: Reach the DMR was introduced to replace the Battle Rilfe. The DMR, like the Battle Rifle, was meant to be a staple all-around weapon. In Reach Shot "bloom" was as added to the DMR to keep people from spamming their shots by creating an incentive to time your shots for increased accuracy. However, this addition resulted in the opposite. When a player would spam fire their shots their shots would end up in a random spot within the size of the bloom. Players started spamming their shots in in many cases this was more effective than actually timing your shots. This problem lead to many DMR fights where the victor was determined by RNG thus taking the competitive feeling away from the game. Hearthstone: Although RNG is present in many card games, Hearthstone has become known for going overboard with it. Many of its competitive players stress the dangers of cards with random effects that can decide the entire outcome of the game. This lack of interaction with a heavily RNG dependent card and the player rewards the lack of strategy in deck building. Ever since the release of the expansion Whispers of the Old Gods, a card in it, Yogg-Saron Hope’s End has been a controversial card for its random abilities. It has received so much backlash from the Hearthstone community that it has forced Blizzard to release a patch nerfing its effectiveness. League of Legends: Putting LoL here might be a little strange but its early version serves as a good example as it features Random game play to some extent: In early LOL there was this equipment called Ninja boots. Its effect is making the champion have 15% of dodging any incoming normal physical attack. It sounds not bad, but in actual play especially those high level rank play, diamond and master players complain that this equipment makes the game uncertain and unstable, making them hard to calculate damage and perform a precise kill, which is exactly the charming part of the game. So this equipment changed after several medas.